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Privacy Policy and Cookie notice

The information Boston collects when you register an account and what we use it for...

General Business Activities

When you buy goods or services from us, you are entering into a contract with us. We will need to set up an account for you in order to fulfil our obligations as a supplier. To set this up, we will ask you to provide some personal information such as;

Full name

Company Name

Position within the company

Address (for delivery)

Address (for invoicing)

Work phone number(s)

Mobile phone number

Work e-mail address(es)

If you have a pre-payment account with us, we may require some further details to enable payment.

If you have a credit account with us or are setting up a credit account with us, we get information about you from credit reference agencies. This is covered in more detail in the section, Who we share your information with and why.

Support

To enable us to fulfil our support obligations, we may need to obtain the following pieces of information, but this will be discussed with you should the need arise:

Name of a designated contact at the detailed site

Phone number of the designated contact at the detailed site

E-mail address of the designated contact the detailed site

Warranty (return to base)

In the unlikely event that goods need to be returned to Boston, you will need to initiate a returns request with us for us to authorise the return and issue you with a unique returns number; this will link to the hardware you’re returning and your Boston account.

Warranty (onsite)

To fulfil onsite warranty obligations, we will need to obtain further information from you, including:

Address of the equipment to be serviced

Name of a designated contact at the detailed site

Phone number of the designated contact at the detailed site

E-mail address of the designated contact the detailed site

Website

In order to undertake website personalisation, we will also gather information about the devices you use to access our sites (desktop and mobile), and this may include IP address. For further information on our use of cookies and tracking please see our Cookie Policy.

Visits and meetings at Boston

If you should visit our premises, Boston uses CCTV for security purposes so images; video footage of you and/or your vehicle may be stored.

For fire safety reasons, we will also insist that a visitor pass be completed which will request the following information:

Name

Company Name

Vehicle registration number (if applicable)

Information on your visitor pass will be destroyed when you leave our premises.

How we use your information

All personal data is processed and stored securely, for no longer than is necessary in light of the reason(s) for which it was first collected, see section titled How long we keep your information. We will comply with our obligations and safeguard your rights under the Data Protection Act 1998 and the GDPR at all times.

Data Protection says that we are permitted to use and share your personal data only where we have a proper reason to do so. The law says we must have one or more of these reasons and these are:

Contract - your personal information is processed in order to fulfil a contractual arrangement e.g. to fulfil orders and provide the support and services we’re obliged to.

Consent – where you agree to us using your information in this way e.g. for storing your payment information, providing marketing and product information, etc.

Legitimate Interests - this means the interests of Boston in managing our business to allow us to provide you with the best service in the most secure and appropriate way e.g. to transfer your data to certain Third Party’s such as delivery partners.

Legal Obligation – where there is statutory or other legal requirement to share the information e.g. when we have to share your information for law enforcement purposes.

Here is a list of some of the ways that we may use your personal information, and which of the reasons described above we rely on to do so. Where we list legitimate interests as a reason, we also describe below what we believe these legitimate interests are.

We have a duty to comply with any regulations that apply to us and that potentially involves reporting suspected illicit and/or illegal activities

Undertake website personalisation and administration

Legitimate Interest

Enabling our website to work for you and provide the best viewing experience

Marketing Communications

Legitimate Interest / Consent

To keep you informed and enable functional communication for business activities

Notifying you of critical product updates (e.g. security updates)

Legitimate Interest

To keep you informed should we identify a critical update or piece of information relating you’re a product or service you have purchased from us

To contact you regarding customer satisfaction surveys

Legitimate Interest

To ensure you are satisfied with our levels of service and support

To contact you in the event that you submit a complaint about our products and services

Legitimate Interest

Should you have cause to complain about our products and services, we have a duty to investigate and follow up on this complaint

Logistics planning and stock forecasting

Legitimate Interest

We observe procurement trends to help us better forecast with our suppliers which, in turn, reduces future lead time and an improved service.

With your permission and/or where permitted by law, we may also use your data for marketing purposes which may include contacting you by e-mail, telephone, text message, and/or post with information, news, and offers on our products and services. If you wish to withdraw your consent at any time, simply click the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of the communication in question or alert us by any of the methods described in the Keeping in touch with you section. We will not, however, send you any unsolicited marketing or spam and will take all reasonable steps to ensure that we fully protect your rights and comply with our obligations under the GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

Where your information is shared and why

Supplier Partners

Boston works with a number of trusted partners who provide some of the products and services we offer. Our partners are contractually obliged to maintain the highest levels of personal data security and will only hold the minimum amount of personal information needed to fulfil the orders/services you require (such as deal registration, third party warranty services, courier services, etc)

Delivery Partners

Boston works with a number of trusted partners who provide some of the products and services we offer. Our partners are contractually obliged to maintain the highest levels of personal data security and will only hold the minimum amount of personal information needed to fulfil the orders/services you require (such as deal registration, third party warranty services, courier services, etc)

Marketing Companies

If you have opted into our marketing communications, some of these communications are delivered from third party services and it will be necessary to provide some details to enable this function. The minimal amount of data provided will be used only for this purpose. Our primary third-party marketing provider for electronic communications is dotmailer and their privacy policy can be found here: https://www.dotmailer.com/terms/privacy-policy/

Payment processing

Boston works with a number of trusted third-party payment processing providers in order to securely take and manage payments. Our primary payment processing provider for online and credit/debit card transactions is PayPal and their privacy policy can be found here: https://www.paypal.com/en/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full

Credit Reference Agencies

When you apply for credit with us we will make searches with credit reference agencies. We do this to make sure customers who apply for credit accounts are able to manage the level of credit offered and not committing fraud by providing false or inaccurate information.

In order to process an application, we will supply your personal information to credit reference agencies (CRA’s) and they will give us information about you, such as your financial history. We do this to assess your creditworthiness and product suitability, check your identity, manage your account, trace, recover debts and prevent criminal activity.

We will also continue to exchange information about you with the CRAs on an ongoing basis, including about your settled accounts and any debts not fully repaid on time. CRAs will share your information with other organisations. Your data may be linked to any joint applicants or other financial associates.

Keeping in touch with you

Supplier Partners

We want to keep you up to date with information about new products, services, and special offers that we feel would be of benefit to you. When you set your account up with Boston, we will ask you if you want to receive this type of marketing information; our default position is to not provide this service unless you consent.

Boston will not share your information with companies outside of Boston Group without your explicit consent.

If you decide you no longer want to receive marketing information you can request that we stop by speaking with your account manager, by clicking the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of any of our marketing correspondence, or by e-mailing [email protected]. You may continue to receive mailings for a short period while your request is dealt with.

How long we keep your information

If we collect your personal information, the length of time we retain it is determined by a number of factors including the purpose for which we use that information and our obligations under other laws. We may need your personal information to establish, bring, or defend legal claims. For this purpose, we will, in general, retain your personal information for up to 7 years after the date it is no longer needed by us for any of the purposes listed under How we use your information above. Exceptions to this are where:

the law requires us to hold your personal information for a longer period, or delete it sooner;

you exercise your right to have the information erased (where it applies) and we do not need to hold it in connection with any of the reasons permitted or required under the law;

we bring or defend a legal claim or other proceedings during the period we retain your personal information, in which case we will retain your personal information until those proceedings have concluded and no further appeals are possible; or

in limited cases, existing or future law or a court or regulator requires us to keep your personal information for a longer or shorter period.

If our business changes hands

We may, from time to time, expand or reduce our business and this may involve the sale and/or the transfer of control of all or part of our business. Any personal data that you have provided will, where it is relevant to any part of our business that is being transferred, be transferred along with that part and the new owner or newly controlling party will, under the terms of this Privacy Policy, be permitted to use that data only for the same purposes for which it was originally collected by Boston.

In the event that any of your data is to be transferred in such a manner, you will be contacted in advance and informed of the changes. When contacted you will be given the choice to have your data deleted or withheld from the new owner or controller.

Your rights

You are entitled to request the following from Boston, these are called your Data Subject Rights and there is more information on these on the Information Commissioners website (www.ico.org.uk).

Right to transparency – to be informed about our collection of your personal information and how we use it

Right of access – to request access to your personal information and information about how we process it

Right to rectification – to have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate and to have incomplete personal information completed

Right to erasure (also known as the Right to be Forgotten) – to have your personal information erased.

Right to restriction of processing – to restrict processing of your personal information to only certain activities

Right to data portability – to electronically move, copy or transfer your personal information in a standard form

Right to object – to object to processing of your personal information

Rights with respect to automated decision making and profiling

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection regulator in Europe, in particular in a country you work or live or where your legal rights have been infringed. The contact details for the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the data protection regulator in the UK, are available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk) where your personal information has or is being used in a way that you believe does not comply with the GDPR, however, we encourage you to contact us before making any complaint and we will seek to resolve any issues or concerns you may have.

Cookie Notice

This notice is designed to help you understand what cookies are, how Boston uses them and the choices you have regarding their use.

By continuing to use www.boston.co.uk the “Site”, you are agreeing to our use of cookies in the manner described in this notice.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are stored in your browser or the hard drive of your computer or other device when you visit the Site. This allows the Site to recognise you as a user either for the duration of your visit (using a ‘session cookie’) or for repeat visits (a ‘persistent cookie’). They are not harmful and do not contain any information such as your home address, date of birth or credit card details.

The cookies we may use fall into three broad types:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are essential in helping you to move around our Site and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies, services you have asked for, such as setting up an account, viewing product information, etc cannot be provided. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you've been on the internet.

Analytical/Performance Cookies

In order to keep the Site, its services and products relevant, easy to use and up-to-date, we use web analytics services to help us understand how people use our Site. For example, we can see which parts of the Site and products are most popular, identify when errors occur, and test different versions of a page or feature to see which one works best.

Functionality Cookies

These cookies allow websites and applications to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. The information these cookies collect is usually anonymised which means we can't identify you personally. They do not gather any information about you that could be used for selling advertising or remembering where you've been on the internet, but do help us to serve you with site content that is more relevant to you.

If you would like more information on any of these types of Cookies, including how to opt-out, please visit www.youronlinechoices.com

What do we use Cookies for?

They enable you to transact, whilst other non-essential cookies enable us to give you an enhanced, personalised web experience and determine relevant products to show you.

To personalise and improve your customer experience.

To allow you to securely sign in to your Boston Portal account, so that you can use the services we offer such as Technical Support, Returns Authorisation, Managing orders, account maintenance, etc

To recognise the device that you are using.

To store the content of your online shopping bag whilst you browse the site and to complete an order.

To distribute visitors to our Site evenly across platforms to ensure the content is served at the fastest possible speed.

We also offer you the facility to share your experience on our Site through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. By using these features, you are consenting to allow cookies from these providers. More information about how these providers use cookies can be found at their websites.

Cookies are an essential part of how our Site works, as they remember certain information about a visitor. Boston uses First Party cookies (these are placed there and used solely by Boston) and Third-Party cookies (these are placed there by third parties we work with).

Can I turn off cookies?

Yes – but if you choose not to allow the use of cookies, your experience of our Site will be limited and many integral aspects of the Site, including (but not limited to) adding items to your shopping bag and accessing your account, will not work at all.

To change your cookie settings, or if you want to be notified each time a cookie is about to be used, you should amend the settings provided in your web browser to prevent us from storing cookies on your computer hard drive.

For information on how to disable cookies, please consult the "Help" tab of your browser via the menu bar. For further information on non-essential cookies used for targeting and banner advertising please see below.

Details of the analytical cookies we use

Our Site uses Google Analytics, a web analytics tool provided by Google, to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.

Cookie Name

What it does

_utma

This cookie helps us determine the number of unique visitors to our website.

_utmz

This cookie helps us determine the referral method for people visiting our website. This helps us to analyse the traffic arriving at our website and to determine which are the most popular routes (e.g. direct, search engine search, e-mail link).

_utmb

We use this Google Analytics cookie to help us to record the length of individual sessions from our users on our website. Each time you move to a new page within our website within 30 minutes of arriving the cookie updates so that we know that you are still actively using our website within a single session.

_utmc

Similar to _utmb, we use this Google Analytics cookie to help us record the length of individual sessions on our website

Our Site also uses AddThis cookies. AddThis is an online service to track which social networking options you use. This information is only used to identify which are the most popular document networking tools, and how many people may like our content.

Cookie Name

What it does

Uid/uvc

Features for sharing via social media (Facebook, Twitter etc). AddThis track visitors who use any of their features.

Details of the functional cookies we use

Cookie Name

What it does

.APSNET

Lets us know that you have logged in to a secure area of our website, and safely identify who you are

.ASPXANONYMOUS

Lets us identify you as an anonymous user so that when you login, any actions you have performed (e.g. adding items to a shopping cart) are carried over once you have logged in

ASP.NET_SessionId

Lets us know when you are actively using our website, and enables us to temporarily store information so that it can be accessed by other pages of our website if necessary

shopperID

Identifies you as a shopper, so that you can come back to your shopping cart at a later time

_guid

Makes sure that if you fill a form in and send it to us, that you don't have to fill the information in again if there are any errors or if any information has been missed out

Embedded Content

From time to time we may embed photos or video content from websites such as Flickr or YouTube. As a result, when you visit a page containing these items you may be presented with cookies from these websites.

We do not control these cookies and you should check the relevant third party's website for more information on their cookies usage or privacy policies.

Sharing Tools

On a lot of our pages you will see sharing buttons which enable you to easily share content with your friends through the most common social networks. When you click on any of these links, a cookie may be set by the social network you have chosen to use. As with embedded content, we do not control these cookies, so always check with your chosen social network for more information.

Changes to our privacy policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time (for example, if the law changes). Any changes will be immediately posted on Our Site and you will be deemed to have accepted the terms of the Privacy Policy on your first use of our Site or your continued business practices following the alterations. We recommend that you check this page regularly to keep up-to-date.

Contact

Should you need to contact us for any information security or privacy matters please contact us using one of the following options:

Get in touch to discuss our range of solutions

Find your solution

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Test out any of our solutions at Boston Labs

To help our clients make informed decisions about new technologies, we have opened up our research & development facilities and actively encourage customers to try the latest platforms using their own tools and if necessary together with their existing hardware. Remote access is also available